Ask Me Anything | September 2023
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So, I have data on the lived experiences of 53 trans widows, ex-wives of suddenly crossdressing men. There were 19 sexual assaults by lingerie wearing dude on his wife before she escaped. Of those, 5 were rape. Only 1 was reported. The police just announced to her that they will not prosecute, despite physical evidence. An infant was present in the home when this happens. Do not suggest to a woman that she try to stay with a man who "identifies."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZViL3sZeII&t=1s
Thank you, Gina and Peter, for hosting these AMAs! It is always a privilege and a pleasure. My question for Peter is:
Do you consider yourself to be a dialectical materialist?
Context:
I was researching the academic lineage of prominent Marxists of the 19th-20th century at academictree.org and recognized Ernst Mayr as a close relative on one of the branches.
A diagram of the academic family tree: https://ibb.co/PgD0s1G
Googling “Ernst Mayr Marxism”, I found that I was not the first one to wonder if Mayr was a Marxist. Mayr wrote an article titled Roots of Dialectical Materialism in which he recounts when Russian Marxist K. M. Zavadsky confused him for a Marxist, classifying Mayr’s writing as “pure dialectical materialism”. Confused by this, Mayr reads Marxist literature and realizes the principles of dialectical materialism are the same principles introduced to him in his youth as the principles of natural history. So, this has me thinking about the relationship between naturalism, dialectical materialism, and the seeds of schools of thought. Thanks again for all the NPA content!
“The so-called dialectical world view is by and large also the world view of the naturalists, as opposed to that of the physicalists. Naturalists have always been opposed to reductionism and to the other physicalist interpretations of the Cartesians. I would not be surprised to learn that Engels got this world view in part from reading the writings of Darwin and of other naturalists.” - Ernst Mayr
“It would seem legitimate to claim that dialectical materialism in its opposition to Cartesianism, reductionism, essentialism, and other aspects of physicalist thinking has not inhibited anywhere the advance of biological thought and where such inhibition is seemingly found, it is due to incorrect Marxist interpretations that are actually not part of the principles of dialectical materialism.” - Ernst Mayr
Roots of Dialectical Materialism by Ernst Mayr
http://ihst.ru/projects/sohist/books/naperelome/1/12-18.pdf